“It’s official – 1,000,000 people have joined Bluesky in the last day! Welcome and thanks for being here.” In a message published this Friday, November 15, on the new social network and on X, the Bluesky team savors its recent victory. In 24 hours, the platform welcomed a million new users, mainly from North America and the United Kingdom, allowing it to reach nearly 16 million members.
A record number which resonates with the appointment on Tuesday of Elon Musk, owner of “The more liberal community of X really escaped from there [de X, NDLR] and appears to have moved en masse towards Bluesky”, commented Axel Bruns, Australian researcher, daily british Tea Guardian. Ten days after the US election, users are fleeing disinformation and far-right activism.
A more effective account blocking system
Elon Musk has never hidden his support for Donald Trump in the race for the White House. Or even finance his campaign. Since his purchase of Twitter, the billionaire at the head of Tesla and Space X has largely relaxed the platform’s moderation rules, notably authorizing the return of accounts linked to far-right movements on the network. Claimed as an alternative to X, Bluesky quickly “became a haven for people wanting to have the same type of social media experience as bots and everything else,” according to Axel Bruns.
And for good reason, the social network benefits from a more effective system for blocking or suspending problematic accounts, as well as controlling disturbing behavior. Direct messaging and video compatibility have also been added to make it more like X, and distinguish itself from its Meta-owned competitor, Threads. Despite this success, Bluesky still ranks second behind Threads in the social networking category on Apple’s US App Store. With 275 million monthly active users in November compared to 200 million in August, Threads also saw an increase in its members.
When X goes down, Bluesky goes up
However, Bluesky was launched a few months before Meta’s network. Initially created and funded by Twitter itself, when the platform was led by its co-founder Jack Dorsey, Bluesky opened to the general public in February 2023 on Apple’s IOS operating system and at the end of March on Android. And the least we can say is that its success is more than correlated with the decline of X. Bluesky, for example, declared having gained three million new users during the week following the suspension of X in Brazil last September. The network had also gained an additional 1.2 million members in the days following X’s announcement allowing users to see messages from people who had blocked them.
And the success of the network could well continue. “After January, when Guardian, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, historian and professor at New York University. Especially since the nomination of Elon Musk is already being debated.